Three practical tips to help you connect to love, peace and joy when all around us seems like chaos.

There is so much suffering in the world today. It’s everywhere; on TV, the internet, on your phone… All we seem to hear about these days is suffering and hardship. So how do you get the balance right so you can stay informed without becoming deeply affected by what is going on?

I’d like you to ask yourself this question – is everything around you actually in chaos? Here are three things you can do to help you be more at peace with the world around you, so you can bring yourself closer to love.

Clean up your news feed

What are you connecting your awareness into most of the time? The articles on your Facebook feed, other people’s exploits on Instagram or the drama over on Twitter? You will always find drama if you go looking for it – are you looking for it? Or is it coming up to you and showing itself and being welcomed?

When you connect to drama you are engaging with it, and energetically this means your energies slow down (or speed up) in order to match that which you are engaging. Let me give you an example: a Facebook friend of mine posted up a horrific image of an abused animal and spoke about how this was horrendous and how upset she was to see it on the internet. She not only engaged with what she didn’t want to see, but she then shared it for everyone else to see as well. If this was you, what would you do? Gaze at the image, join in the chat and become upset too, or unfollow that post (or that person) and then donate some money to a charity which helps protect animals? Which is better for the environment? Which is better for your sanity?

Cleaning up your newsfeed can really disconnect you from unnecessary stress and chaotic energies. You don’t have to unfriend people you can just unfollow them, and if you do care about them, and know they’re going through a difficult time, you can private message them and ask how they are if you feel called to do so.

Look at the publication dates (and website addresses) on some of the articles that appear in your feed too. Anyone can publish an article now, and chaos sells. Click-bait websites feed like piranhas on anything sensational just to get you to visit their sites and be bombarded by their adverts. I’m personally hoping people will catch on and stop doing this as the content is so bad, and there are images on there that once you see, you cannot un-see. So don’t click the headlines unless you really want to know more about the issue, and when you do go there, ask yourself “is this a credible, recently published article?” before you start to really engage with it. And only share it if you think it’s the kind of thing you’d like to see appearing in your own feed.

Do your Inner Work

I had a client who couldn’t watch footage on TV of starving children in Africa because it made her fall apart. All she wanted to do, she told me, was go there and help them, but she knew that she wasn’t strong enough to even watch it on television there was no way she could stand it if she was actually standing there beside them. When we went a little further with her inner work it was revealed to us that her inner child was starved of her attention. Ahh. Isn’t this a classic case of projection? There is the child, starving on the TV, and inside her is a wounded child starving for love. Doing your own inner work can soften your trigger points, your soft spots, so that you are more at peace with yourself, and then more able to handle whatever life seems to throw at you.

Make time for the good things in life

We are on the treadmill, juggling, usually with low energy, and at the end of the day we try to unwind, and then do it all again tomorrow. When do you make time to do something for yourself that is fun? And when you do it, are you really, fully present to it, or are you thinking about your work project, or worse, feeling like you don’t deserve to enjoy it because your friend is devastated over her boyfriend walking out? You need your time to fill your cup, so that you have something to offer others. This is your time – how are you spending it? Back on the internet again? OR can you switch it all off and really taste that dinner you got yourself as a treat (no harm in that as long as you are present to it)?

And if you had an unexpected day off next week, and had some money in the bank, what would you do? Why not do it anyway? Plan it if you need to, arrange it, take the time off. And go do it. Because that lifts your energy up, brings you closer to peace, love, fulfilment.

Remember, life is a journey to learn about who you are, and to become the best version of that. If you keep getting upset by sensational headlines, if you avoid looking inwards and healing what is wounded, or not making time to remind yourself of the beauty that is here, your journey, well it isn’t wasted, but it isn’t going to be as fulfilling as it could be.

Abby Wynne is teaching at the next Birmingham Mind Body Spirit on Sunday at 10.30am. Tickets from here:
and you can find out more about Abby here: www.abby-wynne.com

When you release your expectations around how things “should be” and become more comfortable with what is, you can begin to see the stress and anxiety that you needlessly create for yourself. It’s okay to admit it – we all do it, and once we see what it is, we can stop and create peace instead.

The thing that people appear to be anxious the most about, funnily enough, is around the anxiety itself. Being anxious about being anxious! It’s not even happened yet and already people worry that they will be worried. Don’t you think that we create all of that anxiety just through our anticipation of it?

For example, two people recently told me that anniversaries of the death of loved ones are around the corner. They find this time of year very difficult because they become severely anxious. I suggested that they disconnect from the man made date and time of the death of their loved one, and instead, reconnect to the love that’s there, all around them, all the time. Why do we need time anyway?

We need a date and time to know what time to show up for things, what day it is, when the weekend is, but honestly the date and time serves no more purpose than that. Truly. For example, the o’clock tells us that it’s time for dinner, that it’s nearly time to pick up our child from her playdate, or that the movie is starting in half an hour. But paying attention to chronological time disconnects us from our true selves. If it’s time for dinner, we eat without checking in with our body to ask our body if it’s hungry. We have become more connected to what time it is than to our selves, and dinner is no longer about being hungry at all.

A client of mine who has been coming for about 2 years said to me “I’m not wearing a watch any more. I notice all the people around me with their big watches, they’re so proud of them, but I’m happier without mine.” I’ve not worn a watch myself for several years, and I make people take their watches off before a hands on healing session. Not because the watch will get in the way of the healing, but because it gets in the way for me. Perhaps this is why!

Love transcends space and time. Did you hear that? Love is all around us, all the time, no matter what time it is. Whether our bodies live or die, our souls are connected to each other, through love. While thinking about the issue of time vs love, I was drawn to Facebook and I found a Rumi quote, or should I say the Rumi quote found me (what you seek is seeking you… Hmm another Rumi quote!). Anyway this one said: “Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.” Which was exactly what I just said. He knows some good stuff, that Rumi.

So how do we put this learning into practice? That’s the real issue. Knowing something is very different to living by it. We can live by the clock, but can we truly embody love? If we feel more connected to love than to a date and time, we don’t have to wait until the anniversary of the passing of our loved one to speak to them the words we long to say. We can always carry them in our hearts. Yes indeed, we can honour the date and time, but do it in the dimension of date and time, marking an occasion, for what it is. The love is always there. This is the work of healing, the work of the soul. And next time it’s dinnertime, why not spend a few minutes checking in with your body and asking it if it’s hungry!

Abby Wynne is teaching at the next Birmingham Mind Body Spirit on Sunday at 10.30am. Tickets from here:
and you can find out more about Abby here: www.abby-wynne.com

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